Purpose

This paper aims to exam the publisher’s online distribution strategies of print books between a reselling and a marketplace channel with the coexistence of e-book. This study extends the study of channel selection to the content products industry.

Design/methodology/approach

By constructing a publisher-leader Stackelberg game model, the authors investigate the publisher’s distribution strategies. The retailer holds a digital channel for e-book and reselling and marketplace channels for print books. The authors examine three-channel modes for the print book distribution: a pure reselling channel, a marketplace channel and a hybrid channel.

Findings

The results reveal that a hybrid channel always dominates a pure marketplace channel from the publisher’s perspective. Then, only when the print book’s margin cost and the marketplace’s slotting fee are not very high, the publisher prefers the hybrid to a pure reselling channel. The authors also found a Pareto zone where the hybrid channel mode improves publisher’s and retailer’s profits. Furthermore, the publisher is less likely to choose the hybrid channel as the acceptance of e-book increases. The authors also examine the situation where a publisher-authorized third-party distributor runs the marketplace channel and found the results still hold.

Originality/value

This paper fills a theoretical and practical gap for a structured analysis of the content providers’ online distribution channel selection of the physical products and digital products. Different from previous related studies, this study focuses on analyzing physical products’ channel strategies and finds physical products’ cost plays a crucial role in the content provider’s channel decision.

中文翻译：

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出版商在印刷书籍和电子书的图书供应链中对印刷书籍的分销渠道选择

目的

本文旨在检验出版商在电子书并存的情况下在转售渠道和市场渠道之间的印刷书籍在线分销策略。本研究将渠道选择的研究扩展到内容产品行业。

设计/方法/方法

通过构建发行商领导者 Stackelberg 博弈模型，作者调查了发行商的分销策略。该零售商拥有电子书和转售的数字渠道以及印刷书籍的市场渠道。作者研究了印刷图书分销的三种渠道模式：纯转售渠道、市场渠道和混合渠道。

发现

结果表明，从出版商的角度来看，混合渠道始终主导着纯市场渠道。然后，只有当印刷书的保证金成本和市场的版位费不是很高时，出版商才会更喜欢混合渠道而不是纯粹的转售渠道。作者还发现了一个帕累托区，其中混合渠道模式提高了出版商和零售商的利润。此外，随着电子书接受度的增加，出版商不太可能选择混合渠道。作者还检查了出版商授权的第三方分销商运行市场渠道的情况，发现结果仍然成立。

原创性/价值

本文填补了内容提供商对实体产品和数字产品的在线分销渠道选择的结构化分析的理论和实践空白。与以往的相关研究不同，本研究侧重于分析实体产品的渠道策略，发现实体产品的成本在内容提供商的渠道决策中起着至关重要的作用。